One of the two vice presidents, italian Theo Rossi di Montelera, was a twice olympian bobsledder as well as a worldwide appreciated motorboat racer. The strange friendship between rugby and bobsleigh has ancient roots!The other vice-president, the german one, was from Heidelberg. So maybe that city was the "rugby capital" of Germany already in those times

By the way, "Federazione Italiana Palla Ovale, stadio nazionale del PNF" means "Oval Ball Italian Federation ['rugby' was a word too much anglophone], national stadium of the National Fascist Party"

1928-1930: Federazione Italiana Rugby1930-1932: federation disbanded due to not completely clear reasons (again anglophobia, probably; the new game "volata", with rules similar to rugby but with influences of basket, soccer and handball, was launched but with a very poor success)1932-1933: Federazione Italiana Palla Ovale1933-1945: Federazione Italiana Rugbi (with the i)1945-today: Federazione Italiana Rugby

so basically the F.I.P.O. lived just one year and in 1934, date of the document above, it had perhaps already changed name

I'm guessing the earlier ones were more authentic than the latter day made-for-TV varieties. Back then it was intended as a harmless demonstration of culture. Not all hakas are war cries; some are merely dances and others are designed as challenges. NZ touring teams had performed hakas since the 1888 Natives, but the early hakas were certainly not war cries. 'Tena Koe (greetings), Kangaroo,' was composed for the 1903 clash with Australia. The All Blacks apparently first used 'Ka Mate' before some of their games in Britain on the 1905 tour. 'Ka Mate' (it is death) was composed by the legendary Ngati Toa (warrior tribe) chief Te Rauparaha as a celebration after escaping his enemies. The All Blacks did not perform this before home tests until the inaugural World Cup, I believe. Ngati Toa have attempted to gain intellectual property rights over it, though without success. Nonetheless, the All Blacks had their own 'haka' designed in 2005, 'Kapa o Pango (team in black),' though this has drawn fire for its throat-slitting gesture and intimidating nature.

If they're good enough to play at World Cups, then why not in between?

No, sorry, I'm definitively not an expert and I don't know any book or poster about. I've just found these videos, already emerged in the Fira Forum some 2 or 3 years ago.

The first ever match of volata in january 1929, between two military teams of Rome http://www.archivioluce.com/archivio/in ... oto%3DtrueMore than a mix of soccer and rugby, it seems to me a mix of soccer and handball, with some aussie flavors. I think to have seen something similar in the nowadays soccer teams' trainings: a sort of handball played field-wideThis video is also on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie7y2DSkfW0(the opening cartel says: Rome, stadium of the National Fascist Party; the first match of the new italian game "Volata" was enjoyed a lot by the crowd)

A note: "volata" literally means "flown", as wikipedia says, but in the italian sport slang it's synonym of "sprint". The final sprint in a cycling or athletic run is a "volata".

The man present in all the videos above, Augusto Turati, was the secretary of fascist party and the inventor of the Volata. We can see him also in this footage of some months before, may 1928, recorded during the first italian rugby match between Lazio (Rome) and Leonessa Brescia (the city of Turati) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzcuwWi9Q0I

My guess is that at the base of the birth of Volata was not just a general anglophobia but also the fact that rugby was perceived as "boring". Seeing the last video above and other similar of that period, you see a chaotic game, with ball often dropped and rules hard to understand. I remember to have read that in the first rugby test match of Italia, played in Barcelona in may 1929 (four months after the birth of Volata!), the big spanish crowd was bored and confused by the game and anxiously waiting for the football soccer match programmed just after

Just goes to show that it has been nothing but a show piece since the professional era.. With no disrespect to the AB's.. Pre 90's bunch of white dudes prancing around without actually knowing what they were doing was quite embarrassing.. But then again that was the original Haka not the over hyped dramatic pre game show they put on now with pyrotechnics to go you see nowadays

gibbs wrote:Just goes to show that it has been nothing but a show piece since the professional era.. With no disrespect to the AB's.. Pre 90's bunch of white dudes prancing around without actually knowing what they were doing was quite embarrassing.. But then again that was the original Haka not the over hyped dramatic pre game show they put on now with pyrotechnics to go you see nowadays

I find ridiculous the presence of the cameramen in front of the players performing haka, between them and the "enemies" and often just few decimeters far from the players. If you intend the haka as a welcoming dance, ok, the cameraman may stay there; but if you intend the haka as a war dance, the invasive presence of the cameras is the blatant proof that it's mostly a show, like those of Sitting Bull for the eastern USA crowds or the european ones one century ago.If I was an All Black (I would easily have been one of them, but then I preferred to be a simple forumist), I would thrown the cameraman far from me during the haka : )

FLIDTA RISXVA wrote:Canalina

Huge! Lots of Thanks!

I even went further, read about its inventor and enlightened my fellow countrymen in our beloved thread= similar to this one

A USA University which actually entirely replaced American Football with rugby.

The Stanford rugby teams of 1906 to 1917 represented Stanford University as the school's only football program during those years, replacing American football with rugby union. The school had played American football from 1892 to 1905, but in 1906, concerned with the growing levels of violence in football, Stanford and other universities changed to rugby. Stanford played twelve seasons of rugby, during which it played other college teams, club teams from the United States, Canada, and Australia, as well as the New Zealand national team and Australia national team. Despite the team's success, it became clear that other schools were not adopting rugby in large numbers, and after rival California returned to football in 1915, Stanford faced a limited number of potential opponents; and after a year of playing neither sport officially due to World War I, the school returned to American football in 1919

Here's brief coverage of the last rugby match ever played at the Olympics. Does not show the crowd invading the pitch at the end after the US stunned their French hosts (cited as one reason rugby was given the axe thereafter):